Some songs just come to you, some take longer than others. The chorus for Never Tell appeared complete a few years ago. The rest of the song took a while. I...
Some songs just come to you, some take longer than others. The chorus for Never Tell appeared complete a few years ago. The rest of the song took a while. I had the idea of the subject matter and quicky came up with an idea for the first verse, but never could get the music right or any additional verses. So I let it hang out and periodically I would play around with it. A few months ago, I began playing the chorus on pedal steel, then the chord structure for the verses fell in line, Pretty soon verses two and three were complete. I was working on a final verse and had a few different attempts, but none were right.
I decided to start recording anyway and hoped it would come. First tracks(as almost always when I record alone) were drums and acoustic guitar , then bass. I decided to cut a scratch vocal before re-doing the acoustic to fit tighter with the bass. Magically, I sang what became the last verse off the top of my head. It fit what I was trying to express perfectly. I redid the acoustic and made several attempts at a pedal steel track, but none of the were what I wanted and I did not want to do any comped tracks or digital cut/paste..this went on for 3 nights. On the 3d night, I busted out the Lazy River Weissenborn and got it on the second take complete. Did a new vocal and two backgrounds and almost left it like that. It was a little too sparse and pretty dark sounding..I had thought of a second guitar part with Bigsby and echo earlier, but thought it would conflict with the pedal steel. Now I gave it a shot. One pass to try it, then one more for the keeper. Pretty simple song: two guitars bass, drums, three vocals and a slide guitar, a good mix , sounds pretty full. While on the surface it seems pretty dark, the message is actually pretty positive, well I think so. Hope you like it!
ⓒ2013 Joseph Gorfinkle/JGSDelta Music
